


Scarlet Bewitched

by OldSwinburne



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision (TV)
Genre: 1960s, Alternate Universe - Bewitched Fusion, F/M, Horror, Psychological Horror, Sitcom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29195871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldSwinburne/pseuds/OldSwinburne
Summary: “I must say, I have a terrible headache,” said Vision, massaging his forehead. “I think some food must have disagreed with me."Wanda smiled a plastic smile as the laugh track howled. “Why not lie down for a moment, dear? You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Kudos: 44





	Scarlet Bewitched

“I must say, I have a terrible headache,” said Vision, massaging his forehead. “I think some food must have disagreed with me.”

Wanda smiled a plastic smile as the laugh track howled. “Why not lie down for a moment, dear? You’ll feel better in the morning.”

It was only a headache, at first. Vision would suddenly stop talking in the middle of a conversation, eyes glazing over as the pain inside his skull grew. He would blink rapidly, face wrinkled in agony before it suddenly cleared as he turned to Wanda.

“I’m sorry, dear, what was that?” he would say, to which Wanda would reply something like, “Oh, I just heard Gil and Shep down the road were having a tupperware party.”

It was his back, next. Wanda would come back into the house after doing the shopping to find Vision on the couch, staring at his hands.

“You lazy goose!” said Wanda. “You must have been lying on that couch all day! Haven’t you been to work at all?”

“Called in sick I’m afraid, dear,” he said. Wanda could hear coos of sympathy in her ear. “Didn’t feel up to it.”

He remained seated as Wanda cooked the dinner, shivering with cold. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, and she had made sure that the temperature was turned up, but she could see his cheeks turning blue. The next day she asked Jeannie from three doors down her opinion.

“Tony never gets sick,” said Jeannie. “He’s an astronaut, though, so he’s made of sterner stuff. Samantha told me that Darrin got the flu once, though, and she said that her soup made him feel much better.”

But Wanda’s soup didn’t work. Most days Vision couldn’t stand up without help, his spine twisting his body the wrong way. He stopped going to work entirely, although nobody there actually complained. The only one who noticed his absence was Jennifer Wooley , the local governor’s wife, who stuck her head around the fence to talk to her. 

“Where is that hubby of yours?” asked Jennifer. “Nobody at the neighbourhood watch has seen him for weeks.”

Wanda thought about Vision, upstairs, pyjama-clad, contorted in pain.

“He’s out of town on business,” she said. Then she went back into the house and closed all the doors.

The laughter was the worst. She would sit by Vision’s bedside, spooning soup into his mouth, and all she could hear was the guffaws and chuckles of strangers. She would have to sit alone in the bathroom, looking at the mirror, until the laughing subsided, only for it to start up again when she tried to talk to her husband.

It all came to a head when Vision, after a day feeling a little better, tried to fly up to place a book on a high shelf. She remembered, very faintly, times where she admired the sight of Vision soaring through the sky, graceful and awe-inspiring. Here, he floated awkwardly, tugged up as if by invisible wires, jerky and unconvincing. He hovered by the bookshelf, legs half-crossed as if sitting on transparent scaffolding.

“Alright, showoff,” Wanda said, as chuckling filled the room. Beneath the humour, there was a touch of anxiety in her words. “Sort that book out, and get right back down here, okay?”

But Vision didn’t respond to the fed line. Instead, he stared into a patch of air just in front of him, where strange little lights emerge. They began to circle him, flickering and glitching in and out of existence, and he followed them with his eyes, trance-like, as his hand reached up to touch the hole in his forehead.

“Wanda,” said Vision, looking at the flickering light. “I think I have to get down.”

He falls as if his strings were cut, so suddenly that Wanda didn’t register it. She shrieked, but all she heard was the amusement of strangers.

“Vision,  _ Vision---”  _ she cried, and then an unfamiliar name pulled out of her as if by magic--- “ _ Pietro---!” _

She rushed to his side, and saw with a sinking stomach that his face was a pallid grey and his eyes were a blown white. They latched onto Wanda, and there was a horrible look of abject terror and confusion and horror deep in the pupils.

In the end, Wanda had to use her powers to prize his jaw open, only to find that he had bitten a large chunk out of his tongue.

Things got much worse after that. Vision wasted away, for want of a better word. Each day there was less of him, his wit and sparkling charm melting into bland subroutines. He grew paler and paler, and a terrible scar grew on his forehead, the sight of it sending lances of emotional pain throughout Wanda. Eventually, he regressed into non-existence, leaving nothing but a yellow stone and a voice in the air. The Vision had returned to his original form- just a recording of a butler, giving advice to someone in a suit.

After a month of unanswered prayers, she found herself in the living room, phone in hand.

“I wanted to hear you speak,” she says, into the receiver. “I miss you.”

“I’m just away on business, Wanda,” said the disembodied voice, although she did not know at this point if it was Vision or Jarvis. “I’m only a bus ride away.”

Wanda didn’t believe him, although she wished she did.

“Are you happy?” she begged. “Are you safe, wherever you are?”

The voice laughed, a synthetic reproduction of humour. “Of course I am, dear. I’m as happy as long as I can hear your voice.”

“Good, that’s good,” she said. She allowed one hand to rest on her abdomen. “I have good news, darling.”

“What is it, Wanda?” 

“We’re having a baby,” said Wanda, and her tears were not of joy.

That doesn’t stop the damned voices from cheering.

She sat there for a long time, staring at the telephone, still out of its holster. The commercial break comes and goes, some children’s cartoon characters shilling for the latest cigarettes. The credits cycle up, producers and stage hands and bit part actors. All that was left is footage of her, single-camera, unfocused, medium distance, doing nothing.

She was sitting when the doorbell rings.

“Honey, I’m home!” came the voice, but it wasn’t Vision. It looked vaguely like him, but the chin was more pointed, the smile too wide, the eyes too bright. 

He introduced himself as ‘Victor Shade’, and he was all wrong, damp flesh where there should be hard metal, pink clay where there should be synthetic red. He was the Other Vision, the slightly softer alternative that Wanda wanted to both destroy and run away from. But she finds her mouth moving when it shouldn’t, and the words that come out are chirpy and lightly mocking.

“Where have you been, Victor? The dinner’s almost cold!”

And the laughter roars its approval.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this quickly in response to the WandaVision zeitgeist.  
> Not to completely explain the reference, but in the original Bewitched TV Series, the actor of the husband, Dick York, had a debilitating back injury that forced him to retire from the role. He was written out of series five, only appearing via telephone. In series six, he was replaced by the similar-looking Dick Sargent, without any public notification or explanation of the change.


End file.
